


but I'm just an animal and cannot explain a life

by thesilverarrow



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/thesilverarrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Elijah sat down on the park bench beside her without saying so much as hello. Of course, that man could say more with one of his silences than most could with words.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	but I'm just an animal and cannot explain a life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alissabobissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alissabobissa/gifts).



> Set in the near future, in some ways veering AU. (It assumes Rebekah takes the cure, and that it works.) Spoilers for "She's Come Undone" (4.21).
> 
> Title from "At Last," by Neko Case.

It was hard to be out of the house, but since it wasn't her house, (since she'd burned down the only home she'd ever known), she didn't feel entirely at home there anyway. Why not the park, then? It was as good a place as any to suffer through the day.

She had to admit it was easier to forget she wasn't alive anymore when she was sitting under an absurdly cloudless sky, listening to the leaves rustle, listening to her heart stubbornly beat on, like it didn't know she had become a killer. 

Like it didn't know her brother was dead.

She had almost lulled herself into a waking sleep, a reverie where she was a bird with nothing more to contemplate than the easy task of staying aloft, when she heard footsteps plod toward her on the pathway. 

A few moments later, Elijah sat down on the park bench beside her without saying so much as hello. Of course, that man could say more with one of his silences than most could with words. 

"It seems impossible, you know?" she said, startling herself a little at the sound of her voice, so disused lately. 

"What does?"

"That you could be related to Klaus. He always uses ten words when one would be enough."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him smile. She didn't turn, though. This was already tiring enough on its own without trying to remember the steps to their careful, curious dance. 

"Says the girl who currently has the more verbose of the Salvatores wrapped around her little finger."

"Damon and I are—"

"Not my concern, really."

"What do you want, Elijah?" she snapped.

Suddenly, she was looking at him, because he was looking at her – very intently, holding her gaze as long as she would let him. "That. A reaction. You're not happy."

"No, I'm _unhappy_. There's a difference."

"So it's true?"

"What?"

"Your emotions have returned. You're back to the old Elena."

She shook her head. "I haven't been the old Elena in a long time now."

"Nonsense."

"You know, I'm—"

"—tiresome. Really. That's the word you're looking for. You're stuck inside your own head right now and in need of perspective. A walk in the sun, to start. Indulge me?"

He stood and held out his hand, confident that she'd take it and follow him. She'd never known exactly why he could be so certain of her, no more than she understood her own uncanny certainty about him. It was like being compelled, however subtly, except it definitely wasn't that. After all, she'd always been able to manage the same with him.

Without taking his hand, she rose and walked beside him down the brick pathway that crossed the garden. As they passed the entrance to one of the wooded trails, she spun, tugging at his coat and nodding her head in that direction. The sun was beginning to feel like too much. 

He followed without a word, without even a questioning glance, as if he weren't still intent on coaxing something out of her. Like Stefan, he had a way of hovering just close enough to make his presence felt.

as they ducked out of sight of the more manicured part of the park, she sighed. 

"Okay," she said. "You win. Nonsense, you say?"

He waved his hand in dismissal. "It's nothing."

"Good."

A few steps later, he said, "Thank you, by the way."

"For…?"

"Speaking with your friend."

"Oh, Matt? Sure."

"Don't pretend you didn't do a bit of matchmaking. I've rarely seen Rebekah so…"

"I know, right?"

"You've spoken to her since her change?"

"Yeah. She's so different."

"On the contrary," he replied. "She seems much the same person, only contented. And I'm not talking about her ridiculous crush on a young man who I believe just might be the most guileless person I've ever met."

"I know."

"You know?"

"Not about Matt; about Rebekah. She's… It's like she finally gets to be what she wanted to be. That's what I meant by different."

"And now Matt has the singular experience of watching the process work in reverse. This time, he doesn't lose someone to the curse, he finds someone."

"He hasn't lost me." Muttering, she added, "Or so he says."

"No, he definitely hasn't."

A quick glance at his face told her he was looking at her again, and with such a serious expression on his face.

She glanced at him again, just long enough to shoot him a blandly annoyed grimace. 

She said, "So we're back to this thing about the 'old Elena'?"

He shrugged and replied, "You keep bringing it back up."

As they settled into a companionable silence, she admitted to herself that she was glad he made her get up and move around. When she wasn't grieving over the lives she'd taken, she grieved for the people she'd lost, which called for a lot of distraction. On those occasions, her vampirism could be a comfort rather than prosecutor, judge, and jury. 

She tuned her hearing to the chatter of squirrels and the chirp of birds and the babble of a creek a couple hundred meters or so away, out of sight. She felt connected to everything around her, and she cultivated that. She had to be connected to something, and the silent, enveloping woods were easier to bear than a brace of Salvatores.

She was so intent on the sounds of nature that it took her a moment to hone in on the man walking beside her, the measured, heavy thump of his heart. She realized she'd never quite considered him as a living being. Then again, when she met him, she hadn't been one of the undead herself. Now, she knew – both the wings it offered, metaphorically speaking, and the weight of them.

"Do you know what I thought of you?" he asked. "When I met you, I mean?"

"No," she replied, frowning. Then she muttered, "But I'm pretty sure you're going to tell me."

"I thought you were the proper kind of nobly foolish. Then I thought you were just a tiny bit dangerous, because you were clever and incredibly stubborn. And curiously selfless for an adolescent girl. Believe it or not, but in the intervening years I've often wondered what you would be like as a vampire. It's nice to meet that girl."

"Let me guess," she said with a snort. "You didn't find me charming back in Willoughby?"

"Not unpleasant. But let's just say I found you all too like a certain Person Who Must Not Be Named."

"Voldemort?" she said, grinning at him.

He threw back his head and laughed aloud, and the smile lingered on his lips and in his eyes. "Let's compare her to Professor Snape, shall we? Better fit, I think."

"You hope."

He shrugged. "Anyway, I was quite worried. I had been convinced you'd be a marvelous vampire, but without your emotions…"

"Marvelous?" she echoed, grimacing a little.

"And you are. Because you're very much the Elena I came to eye with wary respect and fond suspicion, only you're—"

"Not"—she held up a hand to stop him—"content."

"Not at the moment."

"Look, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm not Rebekah. This is not who I wanted to be."

"Doesn't matter. It's who you are. You never meant to be involved in this world in the first place, but it found you, and you didn't flinch. I've seen supposedly stronger people undone by less."

"It wasn't a choice or anything. It was Stefan. Then it was Bonnie, and Caroline, and…so many people I love."

"Damon?"

"Please, I can't—"

"I've already told you, I am not here to interfere in your relationship."

"So you say."

They walked along for a few more paces, but then she stopped and used her vampire speed to plant herself in front of him before he could move another step.

He raised his eyebrows.

"Would you have told me to flip the switch?" she asked.

"What?"

"If I was sire-bonded to you. Or I guess you could just compel me. Would you have told me to shut off my emotions, after…?"

"After your brother died?"

"Yeah."

He stared at her for just a second, then his eyes went to the sky, then to the trees. His gaze had gone so far inward, she was half afraid of what might come out of his mouth. She didn't expect a soft smile.

"No," he said, finally looking back at her again, but only so as to reach out and touch her cheek, just for a second. "I am perhaps even more stubborn than you, certainly more stubborn than my own feelings. Just because Damon isn't…"

Gingerly pulling away, she rolled her eyes and said, "I though you weren't here to interfere."

"It wasn't my purpose in finding you," he said, finally letting a bit of exasperation creep into his voice. "However, if you'll allow me this one observation, then we'll talk about whatever you wish. Or not at all."

"Fine," she replied, then she turned back around and gestured for him to continue down the path with her.

"Regarding Damon, then: very few people have it in them to be utterly selfless. That doesn't mean a person doesn't care enormously. It means quite the opposite, actually. Have you ever felt a hurt you thought you couldn't bear?" 

As she nodded, just once, her eyes suddenly welled up with tears. Sometimes, being sad like this made her so angry – because she was sure the grief was worse for all it had been bottled up for so many weeks. Then she thought of what she'd felt at all the griefs that hadn't been contained, delayed. Maybe there was no good way to suffer a loss.

As they crossed out of the woods and back into the open again, she asked, "How do you do it? How do you live for hundreds of years, always watching everyone around you die?"

"Not everyone," he replied quickly. 

"Of course, your brothers and your—" She stopped talking, nearly stopped walking, too, but she wasn't sure if she wanted to see the look in his eyes when he talked about his sister's change – whether it bothered him too much or not enough.

"I'm happy for her, you know. But I admit it will be strange, watching her grow old. Novel, but disorienting."

"Getting used to life without her?"

"Seeing her the way I see all of them. You will begin to see human life in a different way."

"I know."

"No, you don't. Not yet. It's not as bad as you think, not inherently. You get to choose how to see it. You can choose to be kind. You will choose to be kind."

"How do you know?"

"One watches a lot of humanity in a thousand years. But I've never met anyone quite like you."

"No?"

"I've never met anyone else who would stab herself in the stomach, just to prove a point."

"Hurt like hell."

"Plainly. Hurt me to watch it. That thing about choosing how to see humanity? Every so often, I find my attitude has been adjusted. I wish it weren't always because of a Petrova doppelganger."

"How is Kath—She Who Must Not Be Named?"

He snorted. "Do you really want to talk about Katerina?"

"No."

"Good. Me either."

So they walked on without speaking, though the world, of course, was not at all silent. They stayed on the wooded path until it brought them to where they'd begun at the bench, then, wordlessly, they began the circuit anew.


End file.
